This Accelerator Targets Startups Aiming To Improve The Lives Of The Elderly

The inexorable increase in over-65-year-olds in the U.S. cries out for ingenious social enterprise responses.

Enter Aging2.0 Academy. The San Francisco-based accelerator targets startups with products and services for senior care; it 's now in the midst of its second cohort with 20 companies.

Aging2.0, the organization in charge of the accelerator, also runs a network of 30 global chapters and two big annual events when everyone comes together.

"We connect business, technology, and designers with startups in the senior care industry to produce innovations focused on improving the lives of older people," says co-founder Stephen Johnston. "We're trying to build an ecosystem, because there are so many moving parts."

Stephen Johnston

To that end it's a lot like other accelerators, especially those aimed at health care, but also really different. Startups receive mentoring and introductions to corporate partners, which pay Aging2.0 a membership fee. But they meet in-person four times a year--three of the current cohort are based outside the U.S.-- including at a powwow for senior industry executives, where startups give four-minute pitches, and a big kick-off conference which Johnston describes as "the CES for aging." (CES, of course, is the annual extravaganza for companies in the business of consumer technology).

The program also lasts a year, largely because the sales cycle to this market is slow; direct customers are largely, though not entirely, senior living communities and in-home care companies. "These aren't overnight successes," says Johnston.

The program also has what Johnston calls a "sister organization", Generator Ventures, a fund focused on aging and senior care. Launched last year in partnership with Formation Capital, a $6 billion private investment firm., it invests in Aging2.0 Academy startups.

Otherwise, Aging2.0 earns a small amount of equity from each startup that vests over the course of the program. The amount depends on the company. But generally, the stake is 5-7% in startups with an early product and key team members in place; 3-5% in companies with paying customers, a clearly defined product roadmap and a focus on distribution partners; and 1-3% in firms with significant revenues for customers and/ or capital from investors.

Johnston says he first got the idea three years ago when, as an expert in mobile health-care technology, he worked for, he says, "a billionaire with dementia." "I found a lot of research into drugs, but little focus on products and services to improve the quality of life," he says. He also realized there were a lot of interesting technologies, from robots to wearables, that could be applied to the aging market.

For Kai Stinchombe, co-founder of True Link and a member of the accelerator's first cohort, the most useful part of the experience was working with other startups facing common problems. "We're all trying to figure out how to have a positive message about something nobody wants to talk about," says Stinchombe. His company sells a credit card and service that can monitor an elderly person's purchases and block the transaction if it picks up problematic behavior.

As for the current cohort, it includes a pretty wide array of products and services. Here's a sample:

Breezie. It sells a platform that makes using tablets more accessible, with simplified versions of services like Skype and email.

I'm an award-winning journalist with a particular interest in for-profit social enterprise, as well as entrepreneurship and small business in general. I've covered those areas for many many places, including The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Crain's New York Busine...